Free The Blissfully Dead by Mark Edwards, Louise Voss Page A

paper overshoes in the dusty corridor sounded loud in the silence.
    The SOCOs were gathered, in their protective gear, in a cluster at the far end of the surprisingly large studio, in front of a torn white screen that remained from when this place had played host to glamorous pop stars. There was no longer any whiff of glamour, just the stink of decay and neglect. And, now, death. There were no windows in the studio, and the lights had been removed, but the SOCOs had brought lamps that cast shadows around them like crosses. Without the police lights, this place would be dark even during the day. Jessica McMasters must have died in the shadows.
    The chief SOCO, Neil Maslen, whom Patrick knew reasonably well, came up to them.
    ‘Who found her?’ Patrick asked, after they’d exchanged greetings .
    ‘A security guard,’ Neil said. ‘He comes round once a day to make sure squatters haven’t broken in, apparently. He said he noticed that a window had been forced open round the back and came in to investigate.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘In the back of the van – we’re waiting for him to stop puking before we take him in for questioning. He’s already splattered the crime scene once and I don’t want any more of last night’s chicken tikka masala ruining the evidence, so we put him in there with a placky bag, a bottle of water and some wet wipes.’
    ‘OK. I’ll talk to him later,’ Patrick said.
    Jessica had been reported missing at 7.35 p.m. the previous evening , after not being seen all day. Her mother had thought she was out with her friend Chloe, since it was a Saturday. So the last person to see her alive was the mother, who’d looked in on her when she was still asleep at 8.15 a.m. that morning, and now the body had been found at 8 a.m. the following day? That meant Jess could have been killed at any time during that twenty-four-hour period.
    ‘I’m not imagining the smell of perfume, am I?’ Patrick asked, and Neil shook his head. In this large space, the smell was less concentrated and eye-stinging than in the hotel room at the Travel Inn, but it was unquestionably the same. And as the SOCOs parted and gave Patrick his first look at the body, he knew without doubt that, regardless of the connection or lack thereof to the murder of Nancy Marr, this was the work of a serial killer.
    Jessica lay on her back on the hard floor in front of the tattered screen. Her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the dead strip lights. Her body had a curious orange sheen that, Patrick realised after a moment of confusion, was fake tan, streaked in places. She was naked, much skinnier than Rose had been – not anorexic but definitely underweight, her ribs sharp beneath her skin.
    Patrick felt the low stirring of rage deep in his belly. He moved closer, Carmella at his side, and took in the worst of it: the bruising on her throat, showing that she’d been strangled, and the cuts. Hundreds of tiny cuts across her body. Just like Rose, except many of these cuts were deeper, longer, as if the killer had found it harder to maintain control. There were marks on her face too: her lower lip cut and puffy; a mark on her cheekbone. A clump of hair had been pulled out. And most sickening of all: the tips of several of her fingers were bloody and raw. He had pulled four of her fingernails out.
    Patrick turned away, the white, cold anger pulsing inside him.
    He forced himself to stand still on one of the metal stepping stones protecting the scene, taking it all in. Her left forearm was adorned with a huge, smudged tattoo of a person – Patrick couldn’t tell whether it was meant to be male or female until he read the name underneath it: Shawn. It looked nothing like the lead singer of the band, as far as he could tell, but it was clearly meant to represent him. Silly girl , he thought. How would that have looked when she was in her forties?
    But now she would never even see her twenties.
    Noticing something else, he stooped low